[ODE] Re: Package Comparisons

[Erwin Coumans]

Hi,

you can distinguish physics engine in several ways, like real-time versus
non-realtime, opensource versus commercial (support level), features etc.
As I'm working for Havok I won't make comments on the commercial packages,
I do have my private Blender testbed to compare all available real-time
engines.

regarding to dynamo: it has been developed by Bart Barenbrug, Eindhoven
University Netherlands,
just like Solid collision detection library, but they have not been
combined.
As far as I know this means there is no proper collision detection in
dynamo.
Also Dynamo lacks friction support (in the thesis there is a mention how to
integrate friction but due to lack of time there is no implementation ;).

Probably the best approach is to extend ODE with collision detection
support,
and consider merging the Dynamo functionality to be able to switch between
constraint solvers:
ode's lcp, lu decomposition,conjugent gradient, singular value decomposition
etc.

kind regards,
Erwin Coumans